Mind Sports South Africa's (MSSA) blog on competitive gaming in South Africa from proto-computer gaming all the way through to the most modern. For more about MSSA go to: https://www.facebook.com/mindsportssa/

Thursday, 17 October 2013

Transformation in South African gaming!

While watching SABC TV2 yesterday
morning (16 October 2013(, the Minister of Sport and Recreation
announced the finalists of the South African Sport Awards.

Mind Sports South Africa managed to get
Simphiwe Maphumulo nominated for the Indigenous Sports Star of the
Year Award. This means as a finalist, Simphiwe automatically picks up
a check of R15,000.00 and if he wins the category at the Awards
dinner, Simphiwe will get a check of R130,000.00.

This is why eSports is part of the
sports structure – so that the gamer can benefit.

The Minister also made it clear that
quota's will be enforced in sport.

It is known that the MSSA does as much
as possible to ensure that there is representation of all South
Africans in its teams.

However, what of privately owned
events. The TELKOM DGL still seems to be 'milky white'. All you have
to do is look at the photographs, and you will see very few people of
colour.

According to the last census, whites
only make up 8% of the population, but if you went to rAge, you would
think that you were still living in a pre-1994 South Africa.

DSGL, and all other competitions,
should get in line with the governments' priorities, otherwise it
could be seen that gaming, and the gamers themselves, are reactionary
and do not identify with the New South Africa at all.

My suggestion is that DGL should not
accept a team in their league if at least 2 of the team members are
not blacks.

31 comments:

I'm a person of colour, and I think that your argument is completely bogus.

You're arguing this point as if you're arguing for BEE/affirmative action in day to day jobs or physical sport, which doesn't make sense considering the state that E-Sports is in in South Africa.

First and foremost let's think about when we first got a decent internet connection in South Africa - this was 8 or 9 years after we became a democracy - at this point, this was available to everyone in the country, whites blacks coloured blues dogs cats. Not only whites. Gaming is accessible to everyone in the country, even if you can't afford a computer there are enough gaming cafe's and internet cafe's where you would be able to play your game of choice and get enough time in to be competitive.

The MSSA sent a female of colour overseas not too long ago, purely because she was black, not because she was the best female in her game of choice - this already shows reverse racism in my opinion, just to make a point.

The idea of BEE is to help previously disadvantaged people catch up - so in Rugby or Cricket this is understandable, there has to be compromise. THERE WASN'T STARCRAFT or LOL or DOTA pre-1994. There wasn't any kind of competitive gaming, therefore there was no previous disadvantage.

Now your counter-argument to this is going to be that "us blacks and coloureds had no jobs back then so we couldnt' afford computers, therefore the whites had an advantage 4 years before there was even Brood Wars". Which is still bogus.

There was never any kind of disadvantage for us people of colour as far as competitive gaming goes, and you need to do better research before posting slanderous articles like this. You are behaving as if you're an authority on gaming, when in fact you're just out to promote the MSSA's warped agenda, and trod on everyone else who is trying to make a difference.

"The rest of your arguments have been used in the past in all other sports. " - no, the rest of my arguments have not - Competitive Gaming was non-existent when people of colour were disadvantaged. You're talking about transforming something that did not exist pre-1994. There was no gaming, so how could black people have been disadvantaged gamers?

Your argument is illogical. Just because you claim that it started after 1994, does not mean that it should not transform. That would be like saying that if you started a business after 1994, BEE would not apply.

all businesses existed. esports did not exist. The matter of the fact remains that black were not disadvantaged. White , Coloured , Blacks...all started on the same foot. You cannot want to quota teams now that money is involved. Typical.

ummmm. Just a thought. Maybe society doesn't take games seriously because the rest of society play games to get away from the seriousness of working 8 to 5 every day. The government aren't going to take gaming seriously until It's right under their nose. SA government are still trying to catch up (or should be trying) to the rest of the world. I think colour is a poor excuse for the under-developed SA gaming culture.

Your negativity is against what so many SA gamers are trying to do. In my opinion (which my post is so no offense or argument meant) we have made headway as a colourless nation and i'm proud to be a part of it. You should be too.

You fail to recognise the socio-economic forces that holds back the amount of black people that we see as gamers in SA.

Not that it matters, but I too, am a gamer of colour, I do not see nearly enough gamers (who play competetive style eSports games) who are black. Even in games like Fifa or Gran Tourismo or Forza, black gamers are a dime a dozen. You cannot suggest enforcing quotas when black gamers are a rarity in South Africa.

There is also the issue of ease of entry into eSports, the lowest level of entry into competetive gaming is probably a console and a broadband connection. Now tell me what percentage of black people in SA can afford a console AND a monthly broadband subscription? Your suggestion is actually laughable, I dont know where teams will find ANY black players let alone black players who are good. Maybe in 10-20years time thing will be different.

I would like to know if there are any numbers on the proportion of how many white people play (compared to the total white population) versus the proportion of how many black people play (compared to the total black population)

I would not be suprized if less than 5% of black people played any game online.

You can't just call for a sugestion without a justification and you cannot use the Minister of Sport and Recreation's quote as a justification as that is cowardly and shows that you do not have the decency to think this through for a couple of minutes.

Has anyone also maybe thought about how games don't see each others faces when playing their respective games? In my experience over the past year i joined a team and only met "the guys" at rAge this year. Yes, you could use facebook but if you're a team manager recruiting players (off an open server for example) you judge them purely on skill and not what they look like, simply because you don't know what they look like anyway. How can you propose to enforce colour restrictions when the guys in the team don't even know if the player is black or white? (And you can't use accent as an excuse because accents are never a true account of what colour someone is)

I totally agree with u...we game because it is fun and gives us a break and we dont care what the other guy looks like on the other side of the internet,but what u hear is his personality and thats what makes it awesome..

The government should leave gaming to grow and prosper before it tries to implement such a strategy, understandably the government wants to see South Africa's numbers reflected in all sports, but gaming hasn't grown to the full potential that it could be at. For now the government should watch the community grow and maybe even aid it, the color will come with time. And besides, if there aren't quotas doesn't that mean you get the most accurate numbers for sports anyway?

This is not difficult. Our clan has about 10 players of colour. About ten out of the 40. The other admins might correct me here. If I tell a single one of these players we are,picking them for colour and not,for skill, they will leave the clan in disgust, they are there because of their skills, we only meet them lomg after recruitement. Gaming is the one place where colour, gender and social status have no place. Online we have no colour.

Online we can forget about everything but brotherhood and the love of the game.

Sure, implement development drives to get black folk interested, but do not shove casual black gamers into the pro scene.

And as for your percentage of population rant. It is a question of interest. Get coloured people interested, and let them prove their mettle. Quotas are a quick fix and will never work in 'our' world. The world of the gamer is one where you can excel regardless of who you are, or where you come from.

I started in an internet cafe, as did a lot of others. No home broadband didn't stop us, as it was too expensive. Get more people into cafe's, get more events promoting esports.

MSSA must lead the development, and instead of suggesting quotas, why don't you spend your time fostering interest in gaming?

We don't have the inrastructure to even be taken seriously yet. By the time we get on par with the rest of the world, maybe more people will get online.

100% Correct, Online we have no colour, and in competitive gaming we choose teammates with the highest skill level. Always the black and white, black and white crap.. Give me the best player in South Africa and I will put him/her in my team regardless if he's black, Indian, Chinese or white, as long as he/she can speak English, for it's the common gaming language.

Internet and gaming started post-apartheid, hence BEE can't be applied to it. I went to internet cafe's on the grounds that internet at home were way too expensive. Who stopped the black dude walking into the Internet Cafe to play some games? No one did.

The only problem is, they were never interested in gaming, NOW all of a sudden when it becomes a pretty big thing in SA and more people have access to internet considering that it's cheaper, they want to implement a quota system..

I know you think its a suggestion to just have two non-whites in a team for the DGL. This is my idea: I think you should get yourself a LOL account, download the client, let me know and you can come join my clan we will help you get your account to level 30, then we will start training you and start playing matches against other clans in SA.

If its so easy and there are more non-whites than whites actually playing online games then please lets put this whole thread to sleep. I am offering you my help and training and you can offer you time and effort to prove your point.

Lets see if myself and my clan are capable of getting you to competitive game play standard then you can boast and make all the requests you like to change the entire face of the 'e-sports SA.'